Historical Focus on Race

Geography's Expansive Lens

BOND: Now, back to geography, why was geography interesting to you?

WILLIAMS: I guess because of what I had read when I was a young boy and I wanted to know more about the world outside of Chicago, outside of the United States and so geography. And then I learned quite fortuitously in my first year of college that there was a scarcity of geography teachers in Chicago, so I said, well, this is job security. [laughs]

BOND: Did you become a geography teacher?

WILLIAMS: I did, yeah. I studied geography.

BOND: Was there any particular part of the world that particularly drew your attention?